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Tuesday, 23 June 2015

I was
asked recently to provide an anthropological take on childhood cyberbullying by IDG Connect. The article is here (http://www.idgconnect.com/abstract/9950/are-sexting-cyberbullying-worse-offline-versions) and my full commentary is below…

Prominent
social scientist danah boyd* has pointed out that childhood bullying is not rising
historically speaking and the internet has not caused it to rise noticeably.
School is invariably still reported as the place bullying mostly happens and
causes the most harm. What happens over social media often perpetuates what
happens in school.

The
crucial difference that fuels the concern about cyberbullying is visibility.
Parents have little insight into what happens offline but online interactions
leave digital traces. These traces are difficult to interpret for an adult and
can lead to the wrong, potentially more serious, conclusions about their effect. Moreover, online
interactions with peers and any emotional fallout often happen in a domestic
setting, the kind of setting children are confined to as a result of adult
restrictions on and fears about children being in public spaces.

The
internet is a convenient whipping boy for the persistent problem of bullying.
But really addressing bullying and improving children’s mental health doesn’t
mean banning the use of the internet by a child or necessarily having greater
controls over its use - after all school is an ostensibly adult-controlled
space and look what happens there. It means adults investing a lot more time
and effort in educating about healthy relationships and empathy to produce individuals
who are capable of both withstanding and refraining from bullying. It also
means providing meaningful support that works with youths’ desire to be seen to
be in control when bullying happens. That sounds a lot like hard work but hopefully
the prominence accorded to cyberbullying won’t detract from the more considered
and less kneejerk reactions from people who have bothered to look at the
phenomenon through the lens of people involved.

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

And here’s the plan: First a sweeping overview of one of the
most important drivers of human behaviour and attitudes, why this is important
for organisations to understand and where social scientists like
anthropologists fit in all of this.

Next a closer look at a feature of social life that’s
considered a bug by companies, because it produces uncertainty about the
future.

Then we’ll take a look at the character of the tech industry
in particular that means it confronts this bug or feature a lot.

We’ll then look at some tech and non tech examples of how organisations are bringing the
‘outside in’ to make themselves fit for the future.